I’ve ever had before then and up until this day,” alexander
continued, “Those kids worked so hard, never a bad day of
practice, three hours a day, 16-consecutive weeks, they never complained and believe me, we worked them very hard.”
The 1983 Daingerfield Tigers were led defensively by
seniors Vic edmonds, Guy Searcy, eric everett, Johnny Hendrix, mark rowe, Ladd Freeman, rodney mims, mark austin,
randy Woods and Tim Lipham.

and, alexander, who has 332-career victories said the’ 83 Daingerfield defense would be just fine against today’swide-open spread offenses, “Yes, things have changed, butthat defense was led by a great front four, they were reallyquick, our secondary won Gold medals in the hurdles andrelays in track and field so they had tremendous speed andthey were a shutdown group, and our linebackers were justfearless and could also run to the ball, but hold up againstany kind of running attack.”alexander went on to say, “I understand more big playsare made today, but what we also had was that offense thatcould run the ball against anyone, pound the ball, controlthe clock and we would have played keep away a lot too, noone could stop our running game, no one…well,” alexanderlaughed, “except perhaps our own defense at times.”alexander wrapped-up our conversation by telling mehe is still amazed at the dominance of that 1983 defense,“There was such a tremendous sense of pride in how weplayed the game, on both sides of the ball, but with whatour town had been through with the economy and toughtimes and layoffs at Lone Star Steel, we had tough kids, theyplayed that way, we expected them to play that way, and atone point during the season I remember us not talking aboutgiving up feet, not points or yards, and we were very happywhen anyone moved the ball.”There’s a reason why the Daingerfield Tigers have playedin nine state championship games, winning six times, includ-ing that memorable team in 1983.

Before I get to the next great defensive team, let’s all stop
for a second and realize the term, “great,” not good or very
good, not one of the best, we’re talking among the “greatest
ever,” defensive teams, so, let me choose a couple of Class

5-a programs who have to be considered, although I only
saw each team play twice during their championship season
while covering other games or teams during my career.

1985 houston yates: Santana Dotson was a really good
football player at Jack Yates High School in Houston, Baylor
University in college (consensus all-american in 1991) and
with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Green Bay Packers
in the NFL, before ending his career with the Washington
redskins. But, the 1985 Houston Yates football team was
so talented and deep, Dotson didn’t start until his senior
year. He was a major part of the Lions ridiculous depth on
defense, but he had to wait for his time as a starter on the
defensive line behind James Goode who eventually went to
Oklahoma and then to the atlanta Falcons in the NFL.

That’s what you had to deal with to play football as a
Yates Lion for so many years, and perhaps none better than
the ’ 85 Lions defense that allowed only 84-points as the
state’s highest classification, Class 5-a.

Legendary Yates head football coach Luther Booker demanded near perfection on defense, and if you didn’t give it,
you didn’t play much.

Dotson said growing up, you learned the Yates way quickly,or else, “We always had a strong mentality of defense atYates, Coach Booker’s defensive teams always played withpassion and left everything they had on the field,” Dotson con-tinued, “When I was a freshman, I watched the likes of eugeneHall and John roper and how they played the game and thoseguys were great players to look up to as a young athlete.”Yates went 10-2 in 1984, losing twice to Houston madi-son, but according to Dotson, the seed for the state champi-onship run in 1985 was planted after the Lions 29-19 lossto Converse Judson in the Class 5-a semifinals two yearsearlier, “We pretty much had our jaws set to make up forbeing so close two years earlier and we knew we had someyoung playmakers who would make a difference in runningback Johnny Bailey and linebacker melvin Foster,” Dotsonadded, “If I remember correctly, Bailey and Foster were thefirst two sophomores to start at Yates in over a decade,that’s how special they were.”Dotson said even though Foster was an underclassman,he was a tremendous leader, “melvin made it very clear werenot going to be denied, he just let the entire team know wewere not going to fall short, no matter what, we would play de-fense as one and doing everything we had to do to dominate.”Yates dominated alright, becoming the first Class 5-ateam to win 16 games in a season, and outscoring their op-ponents, 657-84. But, let’s not forget, this is about the greatdefensive teams.

The 1985 Yates Lions have to be in the conversation andsome would say leading the way, “We had a weekly goal ofnot allowing more than 17-points a game because we knewour offense would handle the rest, but then we started add-ing one shutout after another and we had a feeding frenzy,”Dotson added, “We just refused to let anyone into our endzone, within reason since we were playing at such a high-level against some really good teams like Jones, madison,and West Orange-Stark.”Yates beat Jones twice, 13-6 in district and again in thequarterfinals, 21-15. Dotson said Coach Booker worked thedefense harder than anyone, “It was all about conditioning,schemes, contact and Coach Booker was old school, therewere many times we had our 1’s and 1’s and there wasn’tmuch of a drop off at all when we went 2’s against 2’s either.”When asked what the ’ 85 Yates team meant to the city,Dotson said, “I look back, I remember such pride we hadthroughout our campus, the community and city support, wehad been so close so many times, and like melvin (Foster)